Ash disposal

I think if you spread it thin should work good !

Ashes are good for soils with low pH or acidic soils, if you had a lawn installed with a particular grass seed, look up that variety and see if it needs acidic soil or alkaline soil, any grass or plant / bush that likes acidic soils avoid the ash.

it is soluble
you spread it on the lawn or garden like you would any other fertilizer
just dumping too much in one spot would be like the fertilizing effect of dog urine - too concentrated

they are a rather weak PH adjuster - you'd have to put down about 5 times as much to be equivalent to putting down lime.


If you are already fertilizing your lawn like crazy you probably don't need the potash nor (especially) the salts.

Compared to what you buy in a bag they are relatively weak.

There is a doctor who is a health food type guy, has a web site. This guy is pretty sharp. He says that ashes are very good for a vegetable garden because they enrich the soil with minerals, and many people are short on minerals.
I am going to try it when I crank up a garden next year.

I dump mine on the garden and till it in spring. Seems to grow good. Don't know if there are any plants that would do better without it.

I use mine in the garden. I try not to do anything that would encourage grass to grow. Stuff is hard enough to eradicate without fertilizing it.

TedyOH said:

Ashes are good for soils with low pH or acidic soils, if you had a lawn installed with a particular grass seed, look up that variety and see if it needs acidic soil or alkaline soil, any grass or plant / bush that likes acidic soils avoid the ash.

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Exactly. Test your soil pH and nutrient levels before going at it with wood ash. It may be beneficial if your soil is super acidic to help neutralize it. In addition, each plant/fruit/vegetable/whathaveyou thrives in a different type of soil. Test your soil, figure out what you are trying to grow, and then use your wood ash to adjust accordingly. If you just start spreading large amounts of it you can literally scorch the earth you are spreading it on.

I've always done Winter, even on top of the snow so any high concentrations of salt(s) can't burn any tendr Spring growth and the minor nutrients are available to early emergents and not weeds like crabgrass.

I dump (read sprinkle) my ashes in the flower beds all the time. Spread it around, mix it in.

In the fall, the riding mowers exhaust is aimed towards the flower beds as it discharges 90% oak leaves, then I add manure from the barn, and stir it up (ie kick it around when I'm wearing mud boots & walking the Murph ). Ashes get mixed in during the winter using the same process (the boots get ugly, some times ) .... makes for a fairly fluffy flower bed come spring. I add more composted manure if I have too.

In the spring & summer, I aim the grass exhaust the same way. Makes for a pretty good mix.

I also dump ( read "sprinkle" ) ashes on ice around the wood stacks and walk ways. I've used it under the tires of the car & truck to get traction (dirt drive way).

Dirty ice melts quicker than clean ice.

We buy ash to spread on hayfields by the semi-load. A soil test would tell you if your soils are acidic (odds are pretty good here in the northeast with our glacial soils and high rainfall that they are acidic). You can check with UMass Extension for a test kit. When applying on fields the recommendations are to stay below 5 T per acre in a single application to avoid smothering the growing grass; other than that, we go by the test results. The 5T/ac works out to about 5 sq ft per pound of ash.

mass_burner said:

When do you recommend spreading on lawns?

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It doesn't matter too much agronomically. Lime is less soluble, so we try to apply it in the Fall to let the winter freeze-thaw action work it down into the root zone. Lime applied to the surface in the Spring will have little effect for the first year, whereas ash applied to the surface in the Spring will begin to help right away.

On the lawn, however, I would be thinking about how likely it is to get walked through while wet and tracked into the house - it somewhat depends on how finely you can spread it. I get impatient spreading my woodstove ash and end up with big clumps, but it is out in a pasture, away from daily people traffic.

If you determine that you cannot spread all of your ashes out on your lawn and planting beds, there are other options. I sprinkled a lot of my ash on the snow from last week's storm and the street in front of my house is already clear.

Craigslist is great for getting rid of ash. A quick post announcing free ash and it usually gets snapped up pretty fast.

Finally, there is the trash. Any ash left over in my metal garbage can at the end fate summer that has gone unused or unclaimed goes in garbage bags and out with the trash. Just please be sure that your ashes are totally cold. Then wait a few more weeks before putting in the garbage.

Wish it was good to get rid of grubs. My lawn 1/2 acres is being taken over by moles...Hate those little rodents...

Why not do a test on your neighbors lawn and see the results?

"Don't panic it's organic" household, weighing in: we live in NE and the soil here is decidedly acidic (lots of oaks and pines on our lot). We distribute our winter's accumulation of ash over the lawns and the gardens over the course of the spring and summer (never in one dump). The ashes tend to be quickly diluted and repeated, gentle applications are more effective.

The chemical composition of wood ash can vary. Mostly it is calcium carbonate (or similar), with some other compounds including phosphate (which will include K40 which is radioactive). But it might also contain heavy metals, in a unknown and varying degree. Spreading it on any soil will affect that soils chemistry. IMHO, unless you had it chemically analyzed, it may be better to spread it around your (non fruit and nut) trees, on your roses, other flowers and your lawn rather than on your vegetable garden. Or if allowed, send it to a landfill.

If you are burning black walnut, oak and locust that you cut down in the forest, you are burning "organic" wood. It is hard for me to see how you could get lead or mercury, or arsenic in that wood, however, it ought to contain beneficial minerals.

Threads like this make me realize how country I have become.

I have been sprinkling ashes on the lawn for years. And I do it pretty heavy. I have never burned the lawn. On the contrary the lawn greens up well in the spring after spreading the ashes all winter.

As an added bonus, it plays havoc on the moss in shady areas. The moss turns brown and appears dead in the spring. It eventually comes back, unless you treat it with ashes a few times over a period of months.

It may help that acid rain keeps my soil pretty acidic. So putting ashes down lowers the amount of lime I have to apply.

I haven't seen any ill effects of spreading ashes on the lawn in my area.

Simonkenton said:

If you are burning black walnut, oak and locust that you cut down in the forest, you are burning "organic" wood. It is hard for me to see how you could get lead or mercury, or arsenic in that wood, however, it ought to contain beneficial minerals.

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Heavy metals, of which lead mercury or arsenic are just some, can be in the soil for a number of reasons, both from pollution and from natural mineral sources in the soil. Power plants burning coal release volatilized metals: a million pounds of lignite coal will release 420 pounds of lead into the atmosphere. That falls out of the air around the countryside and enters into the soils.

So being "organic" does not necessarily mean anything. Plants, including trees, can and do concentrate metals found in the soil into their tissue (ie. their wood). And these metals are often left in the ash and are even more concentrated there. So pouring ash on a vegetable garden, might even further increase heavy metals in the local soil in the garden, where food plants will uptake and concentrate these metals, and if you eat them might be a problem. I am not saying all ash is a problem, most probably is okay. But you simply do not know if it is or not unless you get it analyzed. Roses like wood ash. IMHO, pour your ash on them, not on what you eat. For what to put on your garden for essential minerals, simply have a compost bin.

We use our ash for ice on the driveway & walkway. We spread it on our flower & garden beds, we put some in our chicken runs for our girls to dust themselves. We spread it across our lawn.